


Family Planning

by Kinda_Kozy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Fluff and Angst, Harry Potter & Ron Weasley Friendship, Other, Parenthood, Plot Twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27259669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinda_Kozy/pseuds/Kinda_Kozy
Summary: Scorpius has been acting a bit dodgy all day. Ron's very suspicious. Harry just wants to get some work done
Comments: 10
Kudos: 7





	Family Planning

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy!
> 
> This is not my first rodeo but this is my first story posting on ao3!!!
> 
> I'll be scooting MOST of my previous work from FF.net over a period of time, as well as publishing new fun stuff! I'm looking forward to making more friends and generally getting inspired!
> 
> I don't know why I decided to post this work first. It's a relatively recent story I wrote for a competition and I usually don't write the Golden Trio as parents but here we are! I'm glad I got to revisit it though, the word limit and deadline of the competition required some moments to get cut short. So it was pretty cool to let the story breathe a little bit more. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys this meager offering, and I love feedback and comments and always down for a friendly conversation :)

Ron Weasley was not in his office. Harry suspected, in fact, that Ron was avoiding his office. Not that he could blame Ron. The Aurors’ Department at the Ministry could be insufferable, at times. It could be so insufferable, that Harry, himself, had left it altogether in favor of Educational Reform, two years prior. It couldn’t be just work that prompted this extended visit, though. Ron’s eyes darted towards the door and his hand wandered toward his mouth for him to gnaw at already ragged cuticles. Harry hadn’t seen his friend in such a frenzy since Rose had started at Hogwarts. 

Best to leave it alone, whatever was bothering Ron. Decades of friendship had taught Harry that Ron was still probably processing the issue himself, and prodding him to share his thoughts would only sour Ron’s mood. However, Ron was now beginning to grate on Harry's last nerve, as he had blatantly run out of reasons to preoccupy himself in Harry’s office; and while Ron promised to help Harry with a speech he was to give at the end of the week, he wasn’t any help in such a distracted state. 

“I dunno, maybe I ought to move the part about equal opportunity in teaching positions down to my second point…” Harry shook his head at the speech. 

Ron grunted in vague agreement, watching the rest of Ministry employees putter around from the small window beside the door. 

“What do you think, Ron?” Harry set aside his speech. “Should I bring it up after I suggest bringing back Divination?” Ron went through the motions of nodding along to the ridiculous idea; a clear indication that he was not listening. “Or my initiative to plant more Devil’s Snare in the Hogwarts bathrooms?”

“Sounds brilliant, mate.”

“Ron!” Harry clapped his hands to get his friend's attention. Ron jumped at the sharp noise and stared back at Harry; he had the gull to look annoyed that Harry had shaken him from his thoughts. “You’re not helping! And you’re acting all dodgy. What’s going on? Is Hestia Jones hounding you to play keeper for the Ministry Quidditch league again?”

“No.” Ron said, flushing. He muttered, “It’s not Hestia...it’s Malfoy.”

“Draco Malfoy?” Harry furrowed his brow. Their schooltime adversary didn’t work at the Ministry, and even if he did, he still probably wouldn’t approach Ron directly.

“No, not that one...the small one.”

“His son?” Harry offered the word with an eye roll. “Scorpius? Isn’t he interning with your department?”

“Yeah. So?” Ron replied, irritable.

“So, you can’t avoid your intern. You’re his boss, aren’t you?”

“Bah, he’s an intern!” Ron waved the responsibility away. “He’s been bringing me the wrong coffee for a month.”

“So why avoid him, at all?” Harry sat back on the edge of his desk. “It’s nearly September.”

“He’s been tailing me,” Ron whispered in conspiracy.

“Again, mate. He’s an intern...did no one explain this job to you?”

“No, I mean he lingers...I think he’s trying to talk to me about Rose.” 

“Rose?” Harry parroted, intrigued against his better judgement at the mention of his goddaughter.

“I think...I think he wants to date her...” 

“...And?”

“And he’s offered me his finest goat for her hand—” Ron snapped sarcastically, “What do you mean ‘and’?!”

“And what’s wrong with them dating? Granted, I don’t know the boy that well, but Al always has nice things to say about him. The three of them are friends, aren’t they?”

“Sure, they’re friends but I don’t want Rose dating anyone. Especially not a Malfoy.” Ron heaved an exhausted sigh. “Bill told me all that heckling over Tori and Teddy was coming back to bite me.”

“Ron,” Harry chided. “Are you honestly holding that against him? That he’s a Malfoy?”

“Is it too much to ask? Not to be in-laws with the smarmiest git I’ve ever met?”

“Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?” Harry scoffed. “They're fifteen; you don’t have to plan the wedding just yet.”

“Please,” Ron groaned at the thought, and shook his head. “What if I’m not, though? Huh? He always looks a bit ill whenever he tries to speak to me, and Rosie gets all red and flustered if his name comes up at dinner. They like each other, Harry. And Rose is a Weasley, through and through. We nest up faster than nifflers in a jewelry box.”

“Yes, I have the wedding ring to prove it.” Harry straightened the frames on his desk. Ginny and the kids blew kisses at him from the pictures.

“You knocked up my stupid sister,” Ron pointed out hotly. “I knew that was a bad idea.”

“Ron, you’re talking about your godson!”

“No, I mean, what’s done is done, yeah?” Ron said hastily to mollify Harry. “But maybe you shouldn’t have ended up with Ginny. Maybe you should have had kids with someone else and then our kids could have gotten together.” Harry frowned, following Ron’s logic, “Like Luna!” Ron proclaimed with a smile. “Luna’s nice; why couldn’t you have ended up with Luna?” Suddenly, Ron was the spitting image of his mother, scolding Harry. Harry, helpless and without a Timeturner to go back and end up with Luna, shrunk into his chair under Ron scrutiny. “No,” Ron contradicted himself after a moment’s thought. “Ginny might rebound to someone horrid, and I’d still end up next to a Malfoy at Christmas...”

Harry gaped back at Ron. “It takes a special kind of idiot to pull off what you just did,” He stated, “Are you suggesting that in a world where I didn’t back together with your sister, Ginny Weasley would have ended up with Draco Malfoy?”

Ron shrugged as if the hypothetical coupling was simply out of his hands. Harry regarded his friend for the madman he truly was.

“Tell me, Ron, how often do you reconfigure our family tree?”

“Like you never think about stuff like that.” Ron snorted a laugh.

Harry blinked with impunity.

“No!” Harry bellowed. He took off his glasses to massage the bridge of his nose. This was exactly the type of nonsense he had hoped to avoid, “Ron, this whole thing is making you crazy.”

“You don’t know half of it. Just you wait, Harry.” Ron sunk into the brown leather guest chair, baring his soul. “Be grateful Lee’Loon doesn’t have a mind for boys, yet.” 

Harry wrinkled his nose at the insinuation that he would behave so erratically over his own daughter’s personal life. Then again, the toddler that could barely pronounce her own name, Lee’Loon, and the young lady Lily Luna was becoming were very much still mutually exclusive concepts to Harry. 

Ron lamented for the both of them, “…having a daughter is weird, mate.” 

There was a knock on the door. 

“UnderSecretary Potter?” As the door opened, Scorpius Malfoy was timid to step into the room.

He was a near duplicate of his father at that age. Thin and pointed features with blonde hair that was coiffed up in a fashion the older men could only assume was fashionable for young people. Harry’s sons had inherited his famous unruly black mop of hair and he knew from experience it would rebel a comb until well past their teenage years. 14-year-old Hugo was attempting to grow his hair long to emulate his Uncle Bill’s classic look, but his curls from Hermione’s side of the gene pool were interfering.

“Auror Weasley, g-good, there you are.” Scorpius saw Ron shrinking into his chair. “Auror Jones said you might be here.” 

“Ah, clever old Hestia,” Ron mused, closing his eyes as if settling down for a nap. This was a patented Ron Weasley ploy; Harry knew he was hoping Scorpius would take the hint and leave him be. It never worked. “Did you need something, Mr Malfoy?”

“Well, I was hoping to speak to you alone, Sir.” The mannerisms and inflections were so similar to Draco’s, however, all the malice of the senior’s voice had been replaced with tender awkwardness. ”But I suppose the both of you here wouldn't be any different.”

“What can we do for you, son?” Harry took pity on the boy as Ron blatantly stayed silent.

“Well, you see—it’s like this.” Ron watched through one slit eye, Malfoy stuttered under his suspicious gaze.

“We’ve been friends for a while; Albus and me...and Rose, and—”

Ron interjected, unable to wait for the boy to finish, “I’m sorry, no!”

“No!?” Scorpius shot back. His indigence and flabbergasted expression made him the spitting image of his father.

“No,” Ron confirmed, standing to his fullest height to look more foreboding, “Look, Malfoy, I’m not holding your namesake against you when I say this. I mean, you’re an alright bloke and a passable intern. But I can’t allow it. I just can’t allow Rose to get caught up in your bad boy posture and your—,” Ron gestured to all of Scorpius to find another unlikable quality, “—Fancy hair cut. I don’t think she’s ready to date, and, anyhow, she is too good for you.” 

Satisfied, Ron huffed and straightened his robes. Scorpius’ jaw would have been on the floor if it could go any lower. Harry sat silently on his desk.

“I’m not asking to date Rose! Why would I even ask you that?” he continued, perplexed, “What is this? 1885? But anyways, I don’t even fancy Rose.”

“O.,” Ron groused for a moment, but found a new source of anger. “Well, why not?”

“Now you’re upset that he doesn’t fancy her?” Harry protested.

Ron seethed in return, “If he doesn’t like her, I’d like to know why.” Ron was now completely despondent, “I mean, Rosie is delightful! She’s smart and she’s cute as a button—” 

“Rose is nice, and she’s my friend,” Scorpius insisted. “But I would never like her that way. Be-because—I’m gay.”

Time paused for a minute between the three men in the room.

“Huh...” Ron replied thoughtfully, sharing a look with Harry. He turned back to his intern, “Then what have you been trying to tell us?”

“That!!” Scorpius sputtered, “That I’m gay. Merlin.”

“Hang on,” Harry chimed in equally confused, “Why are you telling us you’re...?”

“Gay,” Ron supplied.

“Yes.” Harry gulped down his lack of grace.“That.”

“What I was trying to say earlier was...” Scorpius shuffled from foot to foot trying to get the words out. When they finally came, it was in a quick stream of run-on sentences. “Rose and Albus have been my friends for a while...and they always say stuff about you being easy to talk to. And I haven’t really told people, but I reckon I think I’m ready to start. So, I told a stranger...well technically I yelled it at a woman on the muggle underground—but I have decided that counts. So I figure, the next step up from a stranger that is not my parents, is somebody else’s parents…”

“And that’s us...” Harry summarized lamely. Scorpius nodded weakly as he was a bit winded from speaking so quickly before.

“When I got assigned the Aurors’ Department for my summer internship, I figured I work alongside Auror Weasley and work my way up to telling him. But I noticed we were working less and less together, and running out of chances.”

Ron nodded, absorbing the information. “Well…Good show, Scorpius. Glad you had a chance to come o--” His mouth clamped shut as if he had eaten a lemon. He took a sharp inhale through the nose before course correcting, “a-and share that with us.” He seemed to be ultimately quite pleased he no longer had to worry about inviting the Malfoys to Sunday brunch. 

“Yes...erm,” Harry cleared his throat to drop his voice to his lower register, “On behalf of the Ministry, I just want to let you know that we encourage diversity in all departments, even with our interns from Hogwarts.”

“Well said, Harry,” Ron concurred in his own authoritative tone. “Was there anything else you wanted to say?” 

“No, Sir.” Scorpius flicked his eyes between his superiors and the floor. “You’re not going to tell anyone...are you?”

“Who would we tell?” Harry asked, bemused.

“Erm...Rose, Albus...my father?”

“So you haven’t told them yet?” Ron probed, suddenly struck by a thought.

“I-I was going to try to talk to each of them before school starts.”

“Right, of course,” Ron murmured more to himself than in response to Scorpius. Harry glanced over at Ron. Ron’s expression brightened again as he continued, formally addressing his intern this time, “Well, I’ll tell you, Scorpius. I must have an inbox stack higher than the spires. Would you mind giving me a head start on the afternoon and go sort some reports for me?” 

“Yeah,” Scorpius’ mouth ticked upward into a smile. So that’s what one of those would have looked like all those years ago, Harry thought to himself. “Of course!” 

The boy turned to go. 

“Scorpius?” The intern looked back expecting more tasks. Now that he had his attention, Harry was at a loss. “You know, erm, hey, I’m sure you get plenty of time with Al and James at school but maybe you want to come and have dinner and catch up with them before term starts?” 

“Erm, y-yeah. That’d be brilliant!” The small smile from before bloomed into a full blown grin, “I can owl Albus about it.” Harry nodded the affirmative and Scorpius left the office in a proud march. Harry and Ron watched him go.

“What the Hell did you do that for?” Ron snapped once the door was shut, his mask of affability dropped.

“I-I dunno,” Harry stuttered, taken aback to be on the defense, “I ‘spose--I felt bad. It just occurred to me. Ron, we’ve never had him over during holidays.”

“Neither have we.” Ron shrugged, but in discomfort and not entirely deaf to Harry’s point.

“Right,” Harry pressed,”So, I spent every chance I could with your lot during holidays, and our kids and him are friends. Good enough friends that he thought he could tell us that and we’ve never so much as had him over even for dinner.”

“Mate,” Ron leaned forward in his seat. “Draco Malfoy isn’t sending us owls begging to have Rosie or Al over for a fortnight, either.” Ron’s voice was sober as he continued, “I know we don’t hate his guts the way we did before, but it’s still weird, and it might take more than our kids being friendly until it’s...not weird. And that’s okay, you don’t have to be guilty about it.”

“I ‘spose.” Harry pursed his lips.“You’re not thinking of owling Draco are you?” Harry asked, suddenly struck by another thought.

“To have Scorpius stay with us for a fortnight?” Ron grimaced, “Wouldn’t that be a bit inappropriate? He is my intern, Harry.”

“No, I mean...about what he told us,” Harry waved his hand vaguely at the door. “You seemed rather preoccupied over whether he had spoken to his father, yet.”

“What?” Ron shot back, appalled, “No! Are you mad? That’s sick, Mate,” he held his indignance for all but a moment, “I haven’t got time to worry about Malfoy’s reaction.” Harry could still see the wheels turning behind Ron’s eyes. “I need to see Hermione,” Ron announced, standing from his chair.

“I thought you agreed not to interrupt each other at work anymore.” Harry cocked an eyebrow at Ron’s urgency. 

“Harry!” Ron growled, rolling his eyes in a manner that he had certainly picked up from his wife, “Rosie’s still got a crush on him,” Ron pressed, “And we’ve got two weeks before that completely implodes. So when Hermione finds out her daughter fancies a boy that fancies other boys, I think Madame Minister will pardon the intrusion!” 

Ron left slamming the door behind him. Harry inhaled the sweet newly restored calm of his office. The quiet only satisfied Harry for a moment. He furrowed his brow, looking back at the conversation in his mind. With a sighing chuckle he resolved to go back to his desk and finish his work.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Disclaimer: I am a cis-gendered straight woman, and understand I'm not an authority on the subject of coming out stories. This story is very much about Harry and Ron, Scorpius's part is more of a catalyst. Regardless, I do hope I have managed to give Scorpius some dignity and character. 
> 
> I'm thinking of doing the follow up scene of Ron knocking on Hermione's door and demanding they prepare for the fallout of Rose's crush imploding.
> 
> But I'll never know if you don't tell me :D


End file.
